


Last Hamlet of Feeling

by celestialskiff



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-25
Updated: 2011-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-20 17:43:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/215385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestialskiff/pseuds/celestialskiff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Originally written for Blind Go, mini-round 3. Sai reflects on time, Go, and Hikaru.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Hamlet of Feeling

If Sai could smell, he would have noticed how different Hikaru's world smelt from the one in which he had once lived, how the quality of the air had changed from fresh and crisp to polluted and stagnant, and he might have remarked on the ubiquitous scent of soap. Sai, however, could not smell, and it had been such a long time since he had smelt anything that he had forgotten about it. He remembered something about the sensation of touch, of the feeling of Go stones in his hands, of cold leaves crushed between his fingers, but he experienced the world entirely through sight and sound, and it had been such a long time since he had tasted or smelt anything that he had lost even his memories of these things.

Sai had experienced television now, but it was not generally about Go, so it didn't interest him very much. However, if he had been Hikaru, he might have compared his experiences of the world with watching something on television or in a large screen cinema: he made sense of the world in terms of sight and sound, and though their clarity was far more perfect than that of any screen, he had the same sense of not truly being part of the action.

In the bright tumult of passing days, of classrooms white with electric light and the trembling speed of trains, Sai shared Hikaru's feelings with him. If Sai was no longer much good at remembering how to navigate the contours of the physical world, he was very good at feeling. He held on to life by feeling: by his passion, his determination and his sadness. When he felt something very strongly, Hikaru felt it too, but Sai found himself sharing all of Hikaru's feeling: little pieces of Hikaru's desires and needs prickling through the bond between them constantly.

In the long passage of year after year which lay in front of Hikaru, Sai was sure many people would love him and seek him out, but none would ever know him as intimately and completely as Sai did. It was not just that Sai could survive in Hikaru's consciousness, it was that Hikaru's consciousness welcomed him; their thoughts and intensities existed on the same plane. Sai did not sleep, but when Hikaru slept, Sai shared his feelings if not his dreams: the small anxieties, wishes and arousals that punctuated his night. And when Hikaru was awake, Sai knew at once what he was feeling and thinking. For a long time their understanding of each other was instinctual and immediate.

One day, Sai would drift away, his mind disengaging with Hikaru's and leaving only Hikaru's own thoughts and desires to populate his consciousness. Sai would be aware of his own anguish, not Hikaru's, and, later, he would only be aware of the sense of his own self, drifting towards a kind of calm, and he would no longer feel lonely. It was only when he watched Hikaru sleep, his limbs restless as he wandered through his dreams but his breaths deep and slow, that he wondered which of them would leave the other first, and whether Hikaru would miss him in the same way he missed Shusaku.

Years later, Akira came home late one night, his clothes smelling of oil and smoke, and stood in their flat: his mouth had opened to speak, but he saw the sole of Hikaru's foot sticking out of bed, and he shut it again. Hikaru had not closed any of the curtains and the rooms were full of sticky orange light from outside. He was sleeping as he always slept, bed clothes and limbs tangled together in a way that never looked comfortable, and Akira watched him, and thought about waking him, and did not. He smiled as Sai might once have smiled and Hikaru dreamed about a very old game of Go, and the feeling of heavy cloth around his wrists, and the reflections of flowers in cold, still water, and they were the dreams that Sai might have had a thousand years ago.


End file.
